The Water Act was put in place in 1909, and reflects the priorities and beliefs of that long-ago day. As such, it fails to accommodate new issues such as climate change – which has a profound effect on the hydrological cycle and poses challenges such as floods, droughts, and shifting timing in rain and runoff – as well as population growth, new approaches to resource extraction, and new understanding of the needs of ecosystems and how they can be managed.

Perhaps most significantly, BC is the only province lacking groundwater regulation, something the new Act would establish. Twenty-three percent of British Columbians rely on groundwater for their water supply, yet we do not know how much is in our aquifers, nor do we control who extracts groundwater and what it is used for.

With industries such as shale gas poised for massive expansion in the province, it is important to first take stock of our supplies and plan for their judicious use, especially as aquifers cannot be artificially recharged or cleaned.

Other important issues the Act would address include conservation of water (we are profligate consumers), collaborative governance with public input, flows for nature, and the potential for water pricing and metering – something else most of the rest of Canada takes for granted and which can help greatly with control and management of usage.

The good news is that the groundwork for the Act has already been done, with the input of many British Columbians. Next steps required include consultation with First Nations around their needs and values, and drafting of legislation.

If the incoming government chooses to commit to a sustainable water future for BC, we could see implementation of a world-class Water Act, that would establish BC as a leader in Canada, by 2015.

Now’s the time to let the candidates know that this is a priority for British Columbians, their children, and their grandchildren!

Major developed countries are basing the value of their assets on their reserves of oil, gas and coal, assets that may not only depreciate due to efforts to slow down runaway climate change, but that also may never be fully developed for the same reason.

The result? The potential for massive market losses with as much as 1% of global GDP ending up as “stranded” or valueless assets. Ironically, Stern’s landmark 2006 report on the economic impact of climate change – commissioned by the then chancellor, Gordon Brown – concluded that spending 1% of GDP would pay for a transition to a clean and sustainable economy.

The world market is on a course for change as fear of the consequences of global warming mount, but so far stock markets have been betting on countries’ inaction on climate change – a bet that could go very wrong. For instance, China’s leaders have said its coal use will peak in the next five years, but this has not been priced in.

“I don’t know why the market does not believe China,” says Carbon Tracker’s James Leaton, a former Price Waterhouse Cooper consultant. “When it says it is going to do something, it usually does.” He said the US and Australia were banking on selling coal to China but that this “doesn’t add up.”

This is particularly relevant to British Columbia, where coal exports to China are one of the mainstays of the economy, and plans abound to expand investment in the oilsands as well as natural gas. In the lead-up to a provincial election on May 13th, the debate has failed to rise much above wrangling over who will support the economy best through investment in fossil fuel resources.

Leading provincial candidates Christy Clark (Liberal) and Adrian Dix (NDP) both support investment in BC fossil fuels with no clear vision for transition away from such assets. Neither offers a long-term view for the province that demonstrates understanding of the looming obsolescence of these assets. This approach that could strand BC in reliance on increasingly valueless investments, while failing to protect essential sustainability factors such as water and food security, both of which are threatened by climate change.

The crisis forecast by the report could hit Canadians where it hurts in a number of ways. “Every pension fund manager needs to ask themselves have we incorporated climate change and carbon risk into our investment strategy? If the answer is no, they need to start to now,” said Howard Pearce, head of pension fund management at the UK’s Environment Agency, which holds £2bn in assets.

Other financial experts agree. Jeremy Grantham, a billionaire fund manager who oversees $106bn of assets, says his company is on the verge of pulling out of all coal and unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil from tar sands. “The probability of them running into trouble is too high for me to take that risk as an investor.”

“If we mean to burn all the coal and any appreciable percentage of the tar sands, or other unconventional oil and gas then we’re cooked. [There are] terrible consequences that we will lay at the door of our grandchildren.”

A one day event at SFU Vancouver on March 15th, this is a ‘how to’ workshop on tools and methods for communicating important messages about climate change.

Register now here.

In 2005, heavy rains washed out a section of Toronto’s Finch Avenue, causing $642 million in insured damage

On April 16th from 1-2pm Eastern time, ACT water policy author and Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade Bob Sandford presented on The Loss of Stationarity in a national webinar (requires Adobe Connect to view) hosted by the Canadian Climate Change Adaptation Community of Practice.

Stationarity is the notion that seasonal weather and long-term climate conditions fluctuate within a fixed envelope of relative certainty. Stationarity therefore implies stability and a relatively high degree of certainty when it comes to predicting and managing the effects of weather and climate on our cities and our agriculture.

For instance, the fact that we have determined that natural phenomena fluctuate within a fixed envelope of relative certainty suggests that winters will only be so cold and summers so hot; that melt from winter snow packs will always contribute roughly the same amount of water to our rivers; that rivers will rise only so high in spring and fall so low in autumn, etc.

Stationarity therefore gives us the comfort we need to build our houses to withstand winds of a certain speed and snowfalls of a certain weight. It suggests we have to build storm sewers only to a certain size because we know from history that rainstorms last only so long and result only in so much runoff.

Stationarity is also the foundation for determining insurance rates related to risks associated with the protection of our homes, property and food crops from fires, flood, tornadoes, hurricanes and droughts, as well as the foundation of the reliable function of the natural ecosystem processes that provide a stable and resilient backdrop to human existence.

Now, increasing average temperatures, climate change impacts on weather patterns, and extensive changes in land use globally are altering the patterns of water’s movement through the global hydrological cycle. This means that statistics from the past related to how surface, subsurface and atmospheric water will act under a variety of given circumstances are no longer reliable.

Unfortunately, we have made the stationarity associated with those statistics – the notion that natural phenomena fluctuate within a fixed envelope of certainty – the foundation of risk assessment in engineering upon which we depend for the construction of our buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. We have also made stationarity the foundation of planning for the future.

We have built our society and the entire infrastructure that supports it around that range which we now increasingly realize no longer represents reality.

We do not as yet have an adequate replacement for stationarity statistics. Until we find a new way of substantiating appropriate action in the absence of stationarity, risks will become increasingly difficult to predict or to price. So will the prospect of conflict associated with those risks.

Bob discussed the implications of the loss of stationarity and answered questions afterwards.

As climate change impacts begin to be increasingly felt around the world in the form of weather extremes such as floods, drought, heatwaves and windstorms, insurers are bearing the brunt of the costs and are beginning to issue an urgent wake up call to governments, businesses and homeowners alike on the current and impending risks.

ACT and the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria collaborated this week with the Canadian Climate Change Adaptation Community of Practice to host a national webinar with Lindene Patton, Senior Climate Products Officer for core ACT funder Zurich Financial Services on “The Climate Resilience Gap: A Global Insurer’s Perspective.”

Responses were provided by ACT water policy author and Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade, Bob Sandford, and former BC Deputy Minister of Sustainable Resource Management Jon O’Riordan, who is ACT’s senior policy adviser and a member of POLIS.

The webinar recording, which includes the complete presentation as well as slides (almost as good as being there!) is available here.

The Semester is a ground-breaking approach to university education, in which around 20 students spend an entire semester together for 15 credits (acknowledged by most degree programs), immersed in a PhD-level reading list and, more importantly, practicing the art of dialogue with expert and eminent guests.

These guests, who include people such as former BC Premier Mike Harcourt, former Speaker of the House John Fraser, renowned journalists and editors such as Andrew Nikiforuk (Wiebo’s War) and Fazil Mihlar (editor-in-chief of the Vancouver Sun) come to meet the students as equals, as well as scientists, planners, artists, and other experts.

Students learn to listen as well as speak, to write for public audiences, to work in teams, and to engage with their work in a way no other university course that I took ever did. You learn to work with heart and soul, as well as mind, another aspect universities could improve on!

For me, the Semester gave me the courage to be myself, to stand up for what I believe in, and helped me understand how to do so respectfully and effectively. I use the lessons I learned there pretty much every day. It was a life-changing experience!

As disheartening news on accelerated melting of ice and unseasonably warm weather continues to emerge from both the Arctic and Antarctic, researchers from four countries are gathering in Manila at a conference hosted by the Manila Observatory to discuss climate threats to coastal cities. ACT ED Deborah Harford will present on CCaR work being done in Metro Vancouver, as well as adaptation initiatives underway in the region.

The international Coastal Cities at Risk project joins Metro Vancouver (with ACT as the principal node contact for the Canadian research team) with Manila, Bangkok and Lagos in an effort to share and develop cutting edge expertise on approaches for physical, economic, environmental and social resilience to impacts such as sea level rise, intense storms, storm surge, flooding, and the associated effects on everything from seniors to businesses to development to food security.

Coastal cities experience a higher level of risk than those further inland because of their proximity to the sea and rivers, and their development patterns. Most of the largest coastal cities are built on river deltas, and many have built right to the edge of the water wherever possible, creating challenges such as coastal squeeze – in which ecosystems (including valuable farmland) are both exposed to salinization and trapped between urban development and the need to retreat or increase diking; subsidence – a consequence of building major infrastructure on silty delta soils; and climate change-exacerbated flood levels for both the ocean and rivers.

Add to these issues the high concentration of population in such cities and the enormous investment in infrastructure assets, and uniquely elevated risks emerge.

For instance, Vancouver is ranked 32nd on the British High Commission’s list of cities exposed to sea level rise, but is 16th in terms of assets, due to high-value waterfront residential development as well as its international airport and other tourist-related amenities.

Furthermore, concerns continue to emerge that the emissions trajectory the world is on is consistently tracking the top end of the IPCC’s worst case scenarios, and that we may now be unable to avoid climate change increases that will cause major sea level rise.

As New York continues to struggle with recovery from the unprecedented impacts of Hurricane Sandy, which may have been intensified by warming of ocean waters, the reality of such dangers is hitting home. Governor Chris Cuomo announced this week that NYC will buy back an extraordinary $400 million dollars-worth of coastal properties, which will never be redeveloped, as the city plans to maintain the area as a protective setback to reduce vulnerability.

As well, authorities are learning from Sandy that they must work together to ensure resilience, as the sea knows no political boundaries, and measures taken by one jurisdiction will inevitably have consequences for its neighbours.

Coastal Cities at Risk is a way for us to do this between countries, to share knowledge and resources that will have mutual benefits for all despite the varying challenges we face. It is an honour and a pleasure to work with our international partners.

On January 9, 2013, ACT joined other BC experts to discuss sea level rise through the tool called Twitterchat, using the hashtag #SustyBC. A rich discussion ensued, and many useful resources were shared, all of which you can read and access in the Storify version, posted here.

The study, conducted by the Fraser Basin Council’s Smart Planning for Communities program and funded under the PICS Sustainable Communities research theme, finds that communities in rural areas of the province consider protecting drinking water supplies (80%) and pursuing economic diversification (60%) as the most important aspects of a successful sustainability strategy. Over one hundred local government elected officials and staff from across BC, along with academics and consultants, participated in surveys and focus group sessions as part of this research. Respondents also identified support from elected officials and community leaders (79%), access to funding (78%) and implementation costs (75%) as the most important factors for choosing actions for a sustainability strategy in rural areas.

Download the full report (pdf).

Guest speakers will include Michele-Lee Moore, Assistant professor in the Department of Geography at University of Victoria and Research Associate and Strategic Faculty Advisor for POLIS, and Frances Westley, JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo.

Webinar Summary

When it comes to watershed governance, interest is growing in the role that innovation can play in building resilience and a capacity to solve the complex problems being faced in watersheds around the globe. In this webinar, the guest speakers will discuss challenges and opportunities for building resilience within watersheds. Michele-Lee Moore, an emerging scholar in global water governance, will discuss the importance of global networks for driving new innovation processes and improving resilience in our domestic watersheds. Drawing on her research from the Prachinburi River basin in Thailand and the Murray-Darling basin in Australia, she will explore the growing linkages between these watersheds and the challenges and benefits that transnational relationships bring for watershed-based organizations. Respondent Frances Westley, a leading social innovation researcher, will focus on the role of social “traps” during disasters and how they can affect the capacity to build resilience across sectors within a watershed.

For more information and to register, visit their website.

The webinar was prepared in response to the need for practical on-the-ground adaptation solutions for local governments, elected officials and staff, including planners, engineers, chief administrative officers, financial officers, and others. The Guide covers a wide range of topics including: OCP (municipal level strategic land-use planning) policies, zoning, liability, infrastructure, asset management, emergency planning, etc. and it contains hundreds of community examples, resources and checklist questions.

The Webinar will be presented by Cathy LeBlanc (Senior Planner with the Intergovernmental Relations and Planning Branch of the BC Ministry of Community, Sport, and Cultural Development) who will share some background of the Guide and highlight key tools and checklists, along with Deborah Carlson (Staff Counsel at West Coast Environmental Law) who will discuss key lessons about climate change adaptation, effective practices to enhance resiliency, and emerging liability issues.

To attend the webinar, please RSVP to Annette Morand (amorand@mirarco.org) to receive the sign-in information and important webinar updates.

Georgetown Climate Center representatives will describe a model sea-level rise ordinance developed to help communities incorporate adaptive regulations into floodplain ordinances. They will also discuss recent reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the potential effects on floodplain mapping and insurance rates.

The webinar will also feature three experienced planners who will discuss their experiences enhancing regulatory standards in floodplains: Marty Ryan (City Planner of Cedar Falls Iowa), Mike Smith (Fire Chief of Waveland, Mississippi), and a representative of Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Visit the Georgetown Climate Center website for more information or register for the webinar here.

To learn more about the effect climate change will have on extreme weather events, read ACT’s report on Climate Change Adaptation and Extreme Weather.

To read more, visit their website or download a pdf of the report.

ACT

If you missed the webinar, you may view it online and download the additional resources (PDF) guide.

For more information on climate change adaptation, read ACT’s reports on Water Governance.

To learn more about Carbon Talks and see their upcoming events, visit their website.

When: November 22 – 24
Where: Outside of Bragg Creek, Alberta
Who: Individuals working or interested in corporate responsibility or water/natural resources.
Workshop is open to all living in Canada.
Workshop Host: Karen Kun – Director and Co founder of Waterlution

You have the passion for moving water issues ahead. You understand the need to make the case for sustainable water practices and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Now, it’s time for you to acquire the rigorous tools to make a lasting impact. At this one-of-a-kind immersive workshop, learn how to build and lead hard-boiled and effective CSR water-based initiatives. What are the lessons from some of North America’s most successful water innovations? What measurements and metrics have been developed to move the corporate world to action? How are sustainable business practices being embedded to stand the test of time? Learn from North America’s brightest thinkers and build your network with like-minded leaders, the very people who can help move your emerging career to another level.

The program will focus specifically on industry, as it is Canada’s biggest water user. There is great potential for increased water efficiency across industries and Canada needs decision-makers with the knowledge and motivation to achieve this. Individual stakeholders, institutional investors, and consumers are increasingly looking to environmental management and resource use as an indicator of sector viability. Waterlution is pleased to bring together the latest research and metrics with water and business leaders for this workshop. Join us to develop the skills of young Canadian leaders in water, business and related fields about what Canada’s corporations are doing, and how they can continue to improve their practices into the future.

Register HERE

The insured losses alone could reach anywhere from $7-$15 billion, according AIR Worldwide. IHS Global Insight estimates overall damage costs at $20 billion and business losses range from $10 to $30 billion.

While these predictions are significantly lower than the losses that resulted from hurricane Katrina (which totaled $135 billion), they’re indicative of the type of costs cities will incur from extreme weather events caused by climate change. The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy issued a report this past May in which it predicted annual costs of climate change for Canada of about $5 billion a year.

The need for adaptation becomes all the more crucial as climate change plays out in the coming years. The federal government will spend $150 million over the next five years to evaluate the effects climate change will have on Canada.

ACT’s 2009 reports on Climate Change Adaptation and Extreme Weather outlines policy recommendations to address emergency management and infrastructure planning.

The report has been prepared as collaboration between the Canadian Climate Forum (formerly CFCAS), the Canadian Water Resource Association, and Toronto and Region Conservation, with significant contributions by provincial, municipal and aboriginal governments, watershed agencies, academia, businesses and ENGOs from across Canada. Funding support for this work was provided by Natural Resource Canada’s Regional Adaptation Collaborative Program.

Both the report and compendium are direct outcomes of extensive research, and the engagement of 85 experts and practitioners the National Water Adaptation to Climate Change Forum held in Toronto in March, 2012.

Webinar Date and Time: November 20, 2012, 1:00 PM (EST)

Registration: Please register online.

About the Report and Compendium
The report explores how policies, projects and community actions have supported adaptation in water
resource management across Canada. Strategic directions for further supporting adaptation are also
presented. These findings are examined across a variety of water issues (e.g., flooding, drought), user groups (e.g., managers, technical , economic sectors), and management levels.

National Compendium of Water Adaptation Knowledge was assembled as an on-line, easily searchable database of projects and policies that demonstrate effective adaptation. The database is meant to highlight best-practices in adaptation and facilitates mainstreaming by providing managers with information on actual adaptation practices and projects.